With 12 large color television sets embedded in the wall near my office, I might have fretted when Richard Holbrooke ambled in early one morning last week.
After all, one Holbrooke ex-wife, exhibiting the charity associated with ex-spouses, had once declared that “Dick’s idea of heaven was watching himself being interviewed on TV.”
Washington adores caricatures, and Holbrooke’s is that of the brainy, brawling, self-obsessed policy analyst-diplomat-investment banker-international troubleshooter. It’s in most of the newspaper clips, which means it will get repeated again and again, ad nauseam.
It falls short, and that’s probably too bad, because to understand the challenges to America as the last big guy on the block in the post-Cold War era, you can do worse than understand the accomplishment of Holbrooke in dealing with a mess of messes, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
It was Holbrooke, the grandson of German Jews who fled the tyranny of Hitler, who brought the warring factions to a negotiating table in Dayton, Ohio, and then badgered and sweet-talked the participants into a near-impossible deal. Although imperfect, the pact still stopped a war that led to the deaths of 300,000 people. He did it, by all accounts, with pile-driving aplomb.
You do remember Bosnia, right? We intervened militarily, to the chagrin of much of official Washington and amid visions of many American fatalities and an election-turning defeat for President Clinton. It doesn’t make the front pages much anymore, but the chagrin and visions proved wrong.
Holbrooke, who throughout 1994 urged Clinton to get more involved before winning his argument in 1995, surfaced in my office because he’s touting a critically praised look at those talks, “To End A War” (Random House). It suggests a far more mature and reasoned fellow than the image steadfastly held by some in the media and political communities.
Coincidentally, we met as it was becoming clear that a Serb offensive in Kosovo was driving thousands of ethnic Albanians from their homes and NATO was mulling some sort of intervention in a dispute in which even theoretically discerning a middle ground is tortuous.
“I knew this already. I’m very concerned about it,” he said with resignation as I flipped open a morning newspaper to show him the latest Kosovo story. He shrugged and returned to scanning a copy of the Financial Times while, without missing a beat, answering my questions.
“We didn’t do anything to stop the first three wars in the Balkans,” he said. “But when we finally stepped in with a strong combination of diplomacy, air power and presidential leadership, the war came to an end.”
If you’re confused by the Balkans, as any rational person should be, his book is a primer on the key figures and the political, ethnic and religious dynamics. It is not a love note to Clinton, his political patron, but gives him credit for leadership, albeit belated.
It is also critical of our military for timidity in enforcing the agreement. But nothing touches the trashing of the Bush administration for gutlessness, in particular former Secretaries of State James Baker and Lawrence Eagleburger.
Holbrooke, 57, began his diplomatic career as a foreign service officer in Vietnam in 1962. He wrote a volume of the Pentagon Papers. He learned all about balance-of-power politics as an aide to Henry Kissinger at the Paris peace talks on Vietnam.
He has been a Peace Corps director in Africa, managing editor of Foreign Policy quarterly, a top State Department official on Asia and ambassador to Germany. He’s a vice chairman of Credit Suisse First Boston and married to author Kati Marton, ex-wife of ABC’s Peter Jennings.
He was assistant secretary of state for European affairs when dispatched to Bosnia, long after he had argued for tough-minded intervention. In the 1992 presidential campaign, candidate Clinton talked the talk about President Bush’s being weak-kneed over Bosnia (“We don’t have a dog in that fight,” his chum Baker opined myopically).
“He is exceptionally strong-minded, intellectually confident and translates ideas into action forcefully,” said James Hoge, publisher of Foreign Affairs and former publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times and New York Daily News.
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“People feel uncomfortable if not up to the force and conviction he brings to policy decisions,” Hoge said. “From what I know, the best folks in the State Department are fans of his, while lots of second-raters rumble.”
As for media manipulation, like a “Nightline” chronicle of one of his Balkan shuttles, Hoge says, “He cottons to the press because he feels it’s useful to get his policy ideas forward but doesn’t leak derogatorily about people,” Hoge said. “He’s much more grown up than the caricature and unusually talented in bringing policy and politics together.”
Holbrooke is acute on the “incredible U.S. ambivalence in the post-Cold War period,” particularly among young Republicans in Congress. Whether it’s replenishing the International Monetary Fund to help Indonesia, North Korea or Russia, or intervening in Kosovo, there is a “reluctance to get engaged.”
“The end of the Cold War did not mean an end of America’s involvement in the world,” he said. It’s why the U.S. military has to perhaps redefine its role and realize, for example, that helping refugees in a far-off land may be part of a new mandate.
It’s also why his onetime mentor, Kissinger, would surely be chagrined with Holbrooke, who believes humanitarian aid is an important element of foreign policy. Holbrooke knows it and is not the least bit concerned.
“I don’t accept the distinction between moral issues and national security interests,” Holbrooke said. “Unless I am mistaken, Henry Kissinger is not here today. I have never believed (his) argument, the realist versus the moralist. I do not accept that dichotomy.”
“U.S. foreign policy has to involve both,” said the man who is also trying to deal with a mess of messes in the eastern Mediterranean, namely Cyprus.
He recalls the thought of the late Dean Rusk, secretary of state for John Kennedy, who felt that we need an olive branch in one claw, arrows in the other. He agrees.
Of course, it also might not hurt to have a crew from CNN nearby too.
Shoot for the stars
Don’t think that the Justice Department is obsessed with Monica Lewinsky, court battles over executive privilege or whether Secret Service agents can testify before Kenneth Starr.
“Theater-goers with disabilities will have better access when they go to Andy Williams’ Moon River Theater in Branson, Mo., under an agreement reached today with the Justice Department,” a June 2 release informed.
Now if we can only get Andy a few new cashmere, V-neck sweaters.